While most Millenials and Z-generation are obsessed with building influencial projects that change people's lives, thousands of people out there become wealthy steadily and silently - by providing simple online services that solve little everyday problems.

Can you build an unflappable business model? A perpetuum mobile that always works, no matter what? Oh yes, you can. In this article, I list five such business models. Should you take an example from them? Well...

There are lots of stereotypical opinions you can hear about Polish people world-wide. Hard-working, with a tendency to steal, yet traditional and religious. But one undeniable fact about Polish society is that it can be unbelievably creative and solidary — especially in times of crisis. And that shows especially clearly...

In this classic scheme, two or more people come together, work out a new business idea, share the responsibilities, seek funding from angel investors in the seed phase, before going for round A, round B… This is the typical development trajectory followed by virtually every successful startup. But, what if...

Last week I posted 10 of my little wins of 2020. And now to the bottom of things!

2020 was impossibly long — and to say that it was a good year, would be a far stretch. Yet, I believe that this year allowed us to figure out better what is really important for us — not only at work but also in life — and what is...

You might be watching Bitcoin price charts with interest or even with excitement. Perhaps, you already bought it. Or you are seriously considering it. Just wait a second.

The summer is over for a long time now, yet, I’m in a mood to bring some memories from this summer. Of course, it wasn’t a typical summertime but rather, quite an unusual one. It’s hard to neglect that the corona crisis changed the landscape of what you can or...

Some ideas are worth spreading. With that thought in mind, in 1984, Marry Marks and Richard Saul Wurman found TED Conferences LLC. Now, in 2020, TED is going through a little revolution. Can we give TEDx talks in virtual reality? It turns out that yes - we can!

This is a difficult year for everyone. It’s not only due to the decrease in global productivity, the crisis in the job market, and the fact that we suffer from limited personal freedom. And the winter is coming! Here in the Netherlands, winters are always dim and a bit depressive,...

I remember how once upon a time, I was impressed when someone was introducing themselves to me as a “serial entrepreneur.” Well, it’s not the case anymore — and let me tell you why.

Have you ever thought of writing your own blog? Perhaps, as a way of promoting yourself as a person, promoting your expertise, or your little business? Or, as a way to foster your creativity and put your ideas on paper before you forget about them? Perhaps this blog post will...

Can a raise in salary infuriate an employee? Yes, it can. Especially if that employee is an ambitious person with a PhD. And it’s all about the timing.

As we all know, women don’t have an easy time in their professional lives. However, while working with lots of people in pursuit of improving their situation in the job market, I noticed that some women also involuntarily make their situation in the job market even harder than it already...

This blog post is a recording from an interview I did for Veronika Cheplygina's blog series "How I Fail." It's all about the mindset and personal strategies that helped me in getting over hardship and difficulties—both in academia and in industry. Most of these strategies, I learned by trial and...

Sep 11, 2020 | Should you consider working as a career advisor? Some time ago I wrote about the bright sides of working as a career advisor in the blog post entitled “Affection.“ What a crazy ride this is! So many turns and unexpected events down the line, and so...

The space of online resources for PhDs thinking of transitioning to industry is massive! This blog post lists courses, blogs, podcasts, YouTube channels, content platforms, and online communities dedicated to helping PhDs in the job market.

I wish creativity was less painful. I wish I was just waking up in the morning with a good mood and had great, groundbreaking ideas all day long. But unfortunately, it doesn’t work like that — to me, creativity is the other side of the same coin as Weltschmetrz.

In general, this world is not just. Some people are born more wealthy than others. Some people are born prettier than others. Some people naturally have more energy than others. Some people learn faster than others. Some people, for some reason, receive more recognition and appreciation for their work than...

Are there any signs in heaven and earth that can tell us along the way what we should eventually be doing in our professional lives — these little cues thrown to our feet along the way that we tend to ignore until there are so many of them that the...

In the darkest times during graduate school, when I was completely out of energy and I saw no light in the tunnel, I used to think to myself, “Hey, don’t worry. It’s not that bad of a job. It could have been much worse — you could have been a...

Living a double life between entrepreneurship and academic research is not easy. This blog post reviews the reasons why this is so, and ideas for how you might nevertheless succeed in balancing on the edge of the two worlds.

Since I just finally defended my PhD thesis, now, I can finally talk about the real reasons why I left academia (although I didn’t really quit doing research! — these are two separate and almost unrelated things…). And, I didn’t necessarily leave for the reasons that most people think I...

This blog post is dedicated to Master students who are at the end of their Master’s programs, and consider going to grad school. What are the pros and cons of going for the academic career, as compared to starting an industry job? What is the best motivation to start a...

When I see Elon’s efforts to colonize Mars and help the humanity in becoming a powerful, multi-planet civilization, I smile. I smile because I know that before we are technically able to colonize any other planet, it might be that in a hundred years, there will be no humanity left....

Have you ever wondered why whenever two of your friends argue, you immediately get that itchy feeling that this will end up badly for you in one way or another? Or why, once you have just one conflict in a group of people, it starts propagating across the group like...

We are all home-grown psychologists. We have all heard about Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, Zimbardo’s Stanford experiment, or Milgram’s experiment. But, have you ever heard about Alfred Adler? Well, maybe you should.

In this blog post, Natalia Bielczyk and Elisenda Bonet-Carne discuss the similarities and differences between different post-PhD career tracks. There is a whole landscape of possibilities!

The past few weeks were quite interesting — I had some strange symptoms. I lost a lot of weight, I was often blushing, I was putting on loud Tiësto music and jumping around my garage like a maniac and bumping into things (to such an extent that I was getting...

For my whole youth, I was spending most of my time reading books and going through thousands of textbook assignments. In the end, after twenty years of torturing myself with books, articles, and never-ending assignments, I realized that being an egghead doesn’t really prepare you for life in the real...

When working with academics planning their first post-PhD jobs in the industry, one pattern keeps coming back: the more accomplished the person is in academic terms, the more difficult time they have with finding their first jobs outside academia. The underdogs on the other hand — the early career researchers...

It’s not a secret that both the Millennials and the Z-generation are vision- or mission-oriented. Young people are no longer looking for a paycheck in their jobs, but also a broader purpose (or, from Japanese, ikigai). This can have really interesting long-term consequences for the job market. In particular, one...

Today, I would like to list a few things that I learned while doing science for the last 8 years. Some of these habits are helpful and make my life much easier now, while other things actually make my life harder.

Interviewing people with interesting (and difficult!) career paths and rare professions, yields interesting conclusions. Namely, these people they tend to share one interesting characteristic: from a very early age, they know what role towards other people they would prefer to play.

The corona crisis stirred the job market and changed the workflow in companies around the world. In these circumstances, business is moving online, and as professionals, we need to adapt and become efficient remote workers. This blog post lists some strategies for achieving good results at working from home. Let’s...

I recently found a list of untranslatable words that appear in many languages around the world. It’s a very interesting list to go through, just to realize that there so many inconveniences or feelings that we all experience but we (almost) never talk about them—just because our local language does...

Recently, I was invited to record a podcast for the PhD Career Stories series. The point of this episode, was to explain how I found myself in the place I am in right now, both career-wise and mentally. This is always an interesting question as most people—including me—are rather poor...

A few days ago I had a long and interesting conversation with a friend who started doubting in her future in academia. She complained that academic life negatively changes both personality and mindset. This made me think a lot.

For the whole last decade, I was fallen in love with Neuroscience. I first found out about the concept of investigating the human brain during my undergraduate studies, and from the very start, I knew that this was what I was going to do for a living. The human brain...

I just turned 34 last week. I generally like my life so far although it was bittersweet at times. Here, as a bDay special, I would like to share 34 facts/memories (in random order) that had or still have some influence on me.

Frankly speaking, I am not sure how to set New Year’s resolutions properly so that all my plans come true—usually, my success rate is about 50%. This year, I am planning to do “only” eight things better than the year before.

The year of 2019 slowly comes to the end. It was a bit of a crazy year, and I learned quite a bit - and this time, it was more of a streetwise rather than bookwise knowledge. In this post, I am listing some of the points I learned in...

To write a book, three conditions need to come together. Firstly, you need to have some interest in writing and enjoy the process. Secondly, you need to have a lot of time to be able to focus on this task. Thirdly, you need to have a topic for a book,...

The industry gravitates towards a high level of automatization worldwide. Machines, machine-learning algorithms and AI take over human jobs in engineering, aviation, banking, war industry, and retail industry—just to name the few. Although in most circumstances, this automatization leads to efficiency and allows for lowering the costs, this is not...

Is this me, or is this my millennial brain? I am asking myself this question a lot these days.

This fall I was travelling quite a lot. I was attending small evening conferences, local meetups here in the Netherlands, but I was also traveling abroad to attend international events - as a guest, as a speaker, or even as an organizer. And, I obviously met a lot of new...

Almost every recruitment process for a large company these days, requires going through a battery of aptitude tests - especially in IT industry. IQ tests, emotional intelligence tests, personality tests, social skill tests. You will get tested inside and out. But there is one very crucial yet chronically overlooked factor...

In kindergarten, most of my peers wanted to become either models, actors, or doctors when they grow up. For a change, I was jealous of priests, and of the fact that they are allowed to listen to people’s confessions for the whole days. I wanted to know the truth about...

I was always wondering why some people are so lucky in life - they are neither geniuses nor work that hard, yet always find themselves in the right place at the right moment, gather the right people around them, embark on the best projects or get the best jobs. Now...

It’s been a long road up to this point, since I left my parents’ place at the age of 18. But, when I look back at the past 15 years, I some some patterns clearly, coming over over again. First of all, I see that there is only one asset...

I always thought that the common beliefs that everything happens for a reason, and that eventually, you will start connecting the dots, is a pseudo-intellectual bullshit sold to the masses for big bucks by Tony Robbins and others alike. And now, I am starting to wonder.

Sometimes, only a real thunderstorm can make you realise that you have been in one and only toxic relationship for all your life - a relationship with your work.

The peak is so close; glowing somewhere on the horizon, yet looking like a fata morgana - step after step, and you do not feel like you are coming any closer. I felt exactly the same way while approaching the peak of Kilimanjaro in 2013. I am making this last...

…about entrepreneurship and entrepreneurs. In this time I was attending quite a few conferences in industry, I was informally involved in some projects, and I made many entrepreneurial friends. And, I was observing. As for a researcher who spent her whole youth solving integral equations, this is quite a new...

This week was interesting; I just realised that even though we live in 21st century, virtually anything can be explained by science and most youngsters are atheists, people still crave for mythological, mystical, superhuman heroes. Maybe even more than ever.

According to a common opinion, former researchers tend to function really well as entrepreneurs. This is true. However, there is one useful quality missing in academia - which turned out to be very painful to me when I went a little bit more into the entrepreneurial direction. Namely, in academia,...

At some point I realised that the decision on whether or not to stay in academia - or in other words, whether to do research or focus on commercial projects instead - is not the real choice I need to make right now. In fact, the real choice is: how...

One insight I remember from all the motivational books and movies I ever consumed is that, entrepreneurs always underscore how difficult it is to go against your relatives and friends when it comes to risking, investing and dropping day jobs on behalf of starting new ventures. In my case, family...

I am listing a few basic things I learned about cryptocurrencies and investing in cryptocurrencies. I have also posted this content on Medium and LinkedIn.

I spent Christmas among family and friends quite as every time before. However, this time, I also had a few afterthoughts as there are some examples of common knowledge that stroke me really hard. You might hear some simple truths from your parents and teachers over and over again -...

In August this year, I wrote a compilation of seven things I had learned from having a gap year. Funny thing is: the gap year was only halfway back then. Now, when it slowly comes to the end, I can easily add yet another seven things I learned since then....

Blockchain is already changing the world of supply chains, higher-education certificates, internet of things, communication between institutions etc. All these systems work well when they do not need to rely on human trust. In blockchain industry, trustless systems are implemented by means of decentralization. Does it also imply that you...

I was recently recommended to read the book by Emilie Wapnick ‘How to Be Everything: A Guide for Those Who (Still) Don’t Know What They Want to Be When They Grow Up' (2017), dedicated to the concept of multipotentiality. In the book, Emilie refers to her own experience as a...

Five years have passed since I hiked to the top of Kilimanjaro; it happened precisely on the morning of 16th September 2013. It surprises me how vivid this memory still remains. Especially the last day of the hike, a lonely path from the last camp of Barafu towards the peak,...

Perhaps, some latent hobbies or talents you inherit after your parents, but for a really long time, you do not realise this. I have recently discovered that I am actually fond of interviewing people. I also learned that an interview can go way smoother than expected when you follow just...

Neuroscience is changing very quickly in the spirit of open science. This involves not only sharing big datasets but also creating new, open-source tools that allow for testing research hypotheses derived in the clinics. One such tool is The Virtual Brain (TVB): a software developed to launch meso-scale simulations of...

How to predict the future? That’s the whole difficulty when it comes to making any choices, from choosing the right studies, through choosing the right friends, choosing the right investments, to choosing the right projects at work. A mundane, typical scientist (such as me) can produce one, two, sometimes three...

As Confucius famously said, choose the job that you love - and you will not need to work for a lifetime. However, this is all not that simple. As a matter of fact, the school system (or at least Polish school system), kills a lot of natural talents: knowledge served...

Since a few weeks I have been doing research projects again, as opposed to past few months when I was mostly trading instead of doing any science. My aim was to work out an independent source of funding for myself, but also to rest from science for a little while...

The year of 2009 was groundbreaking, for at least two separate reasons. Firstly, on January 3rd of 2009, the genesis block of bitcoin was mined. Secondly, on October 12th of 2009, Elinor Claire "Lin" Ostrom has became the first woman awarded with a Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences, "for her...

Recently, we have a lot of new, interesting markets to skyrocket, including cryptocurrencies, marijuana pots, and others. This gave me an incentive to search out for passive income in these markets. But, when I entered the world of trading, I didn't know how difficult and disturbing my new life can...

Yesterday was a nostalgic day not only for me, but for every Polish person there is. The reason is because one of our little heroes, Tomasz Mackiewicz, is dying in Karakorum, and no one can really save him from death at this point. Climbing in Himalayas can seem like a...

Everything in the world follows some rules - the items move according to classical mechanics, and optimise some trajectory according to some cost function. Apples follow the gravity and fall down from the trees straight towards the ground, and the electric current flows from high towards low electric potential according...

Up until now, research on the influence of mentorship on the career perspectives in young researchers is scarce. It seems that, in academia, there is a consensus that mentorship is beneficial in general, but the extent to which the positive effects of mentorship hold in the long term is not...

This year I realised yet another few things about living the academic life. Hereby, I would like to mention just three of them.

Today, the concept of a job is far from the original concept at the times of the industrial revolution. Back then, a worker was a person who wakes up in the morning, and leaves their household for the most of the day, in order to sell their time in an...

Nothing changed since my childhood: I still enjoy stimuli that are annoying to others, the most. For instance, in the whole process of conducting a research project - from project planning, through combining a team, doing actual research, submission, review process, production and promotion - I actually enjoy the review...

As every PhD student at the end of the contract, I slowly get the idea that publishing papers is a minor problem in a researcher’s life. There other, more painful issues, such as the environment fractioning into ‘team Brown’, ‘team Green’ et cetera - especially in circles developing new methods...

In the famous riddle, you are supposed to connect all the dots with four straight lines. You can sweat and try as long as you like but you will always be just one line short from connecting all of them. Unless you look outside the box, and make yourself space...

I observe two contradictory trends in academia these days. On one hand, experimental researchers flock together into bigger and bigger consortia, in order to collaborate in large groups in order to be able to conduct complex experiments that are so labour- and knowhow- expensive, that it would not be possible...

As a scientist, you are doomed to live in a shadow of deadlines, short contracts, and mutual dependencies as you are by definition bound to a dynamic web of people, some of whom might behave differently than expected. The collateral stress is inevitable whenever you are a good or a...

Initially, I was hesitating for a long time if I can even manage to supervise a student. Namely, if I will be able to catch some good vibes and keep on going regardless of little bumps on the way which naturally pop out during research: you try and fail, and...

The popular viewpoint at today's academia is that the biggest challenges are the reproducibility crisis and publication pressure. Well, is this really The Problem?

Researchers have their personal styles of working, and some of them are more like craftsmen, whereas others are more like artists. And the irony is: in order to produce a novel scientific study and publish it well, you need to be an artist, but you also need to be a...

Always there. Always patient, always understanding. Smart, talkative and entertaining. Looking good, every day the same. Not ageing at all.

So, when I found myself in the Silicon Valley, I realised that I had heard about almost all the new trends in business and industry, and almost all the influential figures in the Valley - from YouTube, not from press or television. This means what whatever is more or less...

This evening, I was sitting at the Didirion Station in San Jose waiting for a bus to Los Angeles. It was a Monday evening, 11pm. I just finished a goodbye dinner in a good restaurant with my sister. I was at the station from where the cheapest buses to Los...

It seems to me that the whole Uber phenomenon is ephemeral as in a few years, cab drivers - especially here, in Sillicon Valley - will most probably be replaced by self-driving cars. However, it is interesting to observe this phenomenon from the psychological point of view.

Cryptocurrency market, often referred to as fin-tech and originating in 2008 with the birth of bitcoin, is now a growing branch of finances. It is still a controversy whether or not the digital currencies will ever displace the traditional currencies, or whether or not they even have any value at...

A visit to California is an eye-opener, as the Dutch job market could not be any more different from the American one. Namely, it is way easier to get funding in the Netherlands when your project or your company is eco-friendly, employee-friendly, and has a societal impact or just supports...

Los Angeles has such a rich religious culture. From scientologists, through the Unitarian Universalists, to shamanistic associations. Every time you start talking to a new person, you can end up with a private lecture on a completely unexpected, spiritual topic in this place. This time, two folks whom I accidentally...

‘Yes, people do become successful after reading motivational books but the thing that made them succeed is the same thing that had driven them to read the motivational book in the first place - The desire to succeed.’

I noticed that there are lots of similarities between the life of a scientist, and a life of a DJ. DJs spend their whole days on creating music in the studio, behind the closed doors, on their own, and then go out to the crowd to play the new pieces...

There are two types of things: important things, and urgent things. Unimportant and urgent things should be delegated. Unimportant and non urgent things should be postponed (or delegated). Things that are important and urgent should be prioritised. Things that are important and non urgent, are the crucial ones and should...

Passive income became a popular key term over past few years. It comprises all the possible ways of making money which you initiate and then can let go, so that the money, in a word, keeps on producing itself. Most of the time, passive income relates to online activities, such...

These days, I was thinking a lot about all the factors that hindered my development during first three years of my PhD. Every time I deliberate on this topic, I come to the same conclusion: the biggest problem I had was being driven by fear. I have 13 courses completed,...

I could not understand how people can deliberately abuse their own freedom. I guess that people are naturally afraid of decision making, which might explain why reducing choices to the minimum might soothe them a little bit, and give them some comfort of not being obliged to take a decision.

What does the competitiveness come from? It is not a very prominent feature of the Dutch society - this society is more about equity and cooperation. No wonder: once you look at the educational program at the Dutch primary schools, the first class they ever have is ‘working in teams’....

Just a few years back, kids posting on youtube were just a niche phenomena, aggregating a small audience of hipsters willing to watch. Now, more and more of these - usually teenage - performers, became quite popular and a good few of them collected nation-wide audience. One reason to talk...

The popular belief is that people who perceive themselves as successful and lucky, are those who just take opportunities – notice the money lying on the street and take it. Or, those who interpret some events as lucky whereas others would rather perceive the same events as unlucky. For instance,...

Happiness is not given forever. You can put yourself together and fool yourself that happy times are for good, but in fact, the feeling of happiness will vanish away with time if you do not take care of it properly. It is just like a plant that needs to be...

I sometimes wonder what happens during the maturation process, when people slowly turn from fragile, troubled and empathic PhD students which they were in the past, into a bit psychopathic, emotionless and calculated bosses who push others to do things not necessarily optimal for their development. Just as everyone believes...

Recently I started teaching, and I have a plentora of feelings relating to this new experience. First to say, it is definitely true what they say: 80% of our fears is completely unnecessary.

The doctors were truly confused; they knew about my previous records, but could not really explain what had happened to my body in the meantime. But I think I know why this is the case. Namely, my lifestyle, including too many activities per day, poor amounts of sleep, a tendency...

I was studying extensively in Warsaw, where I was going through three Master programs at a time. Throughout my studies, I experienced a lot of less and more painful exams. Some were funny, some were nerve wrecking. I think the fact that I had such a long list of exams...

‘Productive’. A simple word, however the it bells in my ears like a threat. In Poland, no one around me was ever describing themselves as productive. Could be motivated or bored, could have a flow or not, but ‘productive’ was not in anyone’s personal vocabulary. In the Netherlands, I hear...

The truth is such a relative thing. I saw its relativity in the recent Netflix’ series of ‘Making a murderer’, a documentary about Steven Avery. This poor guy was convicted twice, firstly as an innocent person, and then, secondly, probably as an innocent guy as well. When you watch the...

There were the two of us: I was the sense, she was the sensibility. We met fifteen years ago as second year high school students, and we were close friends ever since. I think we were both sort of gifted, hard working and enthusiastic but there was one major difference...

The end of the year is coming, which is a perfect occasion for little considerations of what happened in 2015, and what is, hopefully, about to happen in 2016. Some of my goals were achieved and some other goals I have to put on hold. However, in general, I feel...

At the times I was studying at the University of Warsaw, there was no mainstream neuroscience I might have possibly experienced.

Current November is probably the happiest November by far, even after correction for the weather. You know, when you are a researcher, every happy day is a success itself. And, in addition to that, if you are an ex-depressed person, every happy day is one step away from death and...

I just had a really wild attack of the imposter complex. This is when you feel that others overestimate your mental and physical capabilities. Pretty much everyone is academia suffers from it, it is just that some people overcome this effect better than others.

Tomorrow, the parliament elections will be held in Poland. Therefore, today, on this particular day, I need to keep calm about my choices and I cannot speak about it to public. However, I think I am still allowed to talk a little bit about my general political preferences.

Human brain can rewire so quickly… I remember the rainy days four years ago when I first came to Nijmegen and tried to survive at the very place. During my studies I hadn't had too many programming courses, neither I had opportunities to present science. No wonder that programming and...

Singers, sportsmen, writers, famous bloggers and motivational speakers, Noblists, inventors, enterpreneurs and famous CEOs. All these people think shockingly similar about the rules for success.